Read Online Adam and Evil by Gillian Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

I’d been or what I was doing. I hadn’t yet mentioned my mother’s offer. I was letting the ideas simmer until I knew what I wanted to say. What I wanted. “An alarm went off. I thought there might be a fire.” In this most fireproof of buildings—but Mackenzie hadn’t heard the spiel.
    “Anything else?”
    “I came out here, along with everybody else, and nobody knew what was going on. One of my students who’d been nearer said he heard a sound like in a monster movie, whatever that means.”
    A woman in a suit with a jacket a tad too tight and a skirt a tad too short, a closed book in her hand, walked by us, then doubled around and hovered, openly eavesdropping. Checking out the man who didn’t listen. “Are you a police officer?” she asked after Mackenzie had said something that suggested his role there. Her voice nearly choked with adulation trying to utter the words
police
and
officer
. “I could help you.”
    I noticed that she didn’t say in what way. I couldn’t tell if Mackenzie noticed. Or cared. I didn’t blame her for butting in. He’s gorgeous in an unflashy way. I am not living with him as a public service. You have to give him a second look to catch the shock of the blue eyes, the good lines time had etched, the total effect with the salt-and-pepper hair, his lanky rightness. Some of his charm is built into his features. The rest takes time to discover, but the invitation to the trip is all over him.
    Or maybe that’s just my take on it. More likely the woman in the business suit had a thing for cops. For whatever reasons, she was enraptured by his existence, and when he nodded that yes, he was an officer, she looked on the verge of a swoon.
    “I was a witness,” she said.
    “Ah’m to take it you saw the event firsthand?” He purposely intensified his Louisiana drawl. It should make him sound lessprofessional, but it doesn’t. It makes his listener want to provide information just to hear more of that honeyed voice. Particularly in a city with as unmelodic an accent as Philadelphia, where ears get tired and in need of a smooth infusion.
    “Yes!” she said, nodding so hard her hair quivered. Then she pursed her mouth and shook her head sideways, again rearranging her do. “No!” she said just as emphatically. “But I heard the worst sound before the alarm went off!”
    “Ma’am, where precisely were you at the time?”
    Ma’am, tahm
… each given at least three syllables. Assaulting an officer was a crime, so I controlled myself.
    “I was walking right about here—where you’re standing— and this
sound
! Like a jungle sound—a shout, but
insane
,
inhuman
!”
    “You see or hear anythin’ else that could be relevant?”
    “Just that … I was pretty much alone out here for a minute. Scared.” Her eyes threatened to take over her entire face as she searched her memory bins for something more relevant than her emotions at the time, then sadly shook her head.
    “Then I thank you kindly for—”
    “Don’t you want my name? In case you need to follow up? Or need more clarification?”
    Or need a date? A life companion? A love slave?
    “Ma’am, I believe that when you leave the library, they’ll be askin’ for a name and number where we could contact you if necessary.”
    She looked saddened by this, but only momentarily. “Wait!” she said. “There was something else. I remember now. After—After the alarm went off, everybody came out here, just about everybody in the entire library was looking around and nobody knew what was going on, if there was a fire, or a robbery, and that’s what everybody was saying, not all that loudly, except one person, some woman, who screamed ‘Adam’ over and over. I remember because at first I thought she was saying ‘at him,’ but then I realized it was the name.”
    Let him not make the connection, I
begged the curlicued plaster ceiling. But the gods in charge of granting me wishes had as little talent for listening to me